Saturday

Diples (Greek sweet treat with syrup and walnuts)

Howdy!

This recipe is not for beginners.You should know the basics of handling pastry in order to succeed with the diples.
Diples are crunchy and sweet and they certainly capture the flavors of Greece.
In Crete they call them Kserotigania.I actually ate my first dipla in Greece and I totally didn't expect this kind of flavor explosion in my mouth.
I tried tweaking the recipe,but the results were not that great.Vanilla tastes horrible in diples!

With a mixer beat the eggs,yolks and baking soda for 10 minutes.(yap 10 min)
While still beating the mix add orange zest and juice very slowly.Add finely ground walnuts.

With your hands (gloves :D) knead in the flours,until you have a semi firm dough.
Chill it for 3-4 hours in the fridge wrapped in saran wrap/cling film.

Dust your working space with flour.Better too much flower than too little!!!!
While working the dough,keep your hands dusted the entire time!!!!!!

Cut the dough in 2 portions and with a thin rolling pin roll out the dough very thinly and evenly.
With a pastry cutter cut the dough into rectangular strips that are 5,9 inches (15 centimeter) wide and 11,8 inches (30 centimeters long).

If the dough is sticky,dust hands,rolling pin and working surface with flour.

Heat up the oil in your deep frying pot/deep fryer.Wrap each strip around a fork,dip the dipla in the frying oil and fry until it starts to puff/rise and gets a light golden color.

Coool the diples on a cooling rack.

Boil the syrup ingredients on medium low heat for 8-10 min while stirring every once in a while.
You can either dip your diples into the syrup or pour the syrup over your diples while they are stacked in a bowl.

Sprinkle with walnuts.

If you are not a fan of syrup,you can skip the syrup steps and use pure honey instead.